One of my goals in presenting this series on police culture is to introduce the DailyKos community to innovative voices and useful resources that can help us better understand policing in America. Attempts at police reform which you’d think would be the final thing I’d discuss in a series like this is the first thing I am going to talk about. The reason for this inversion is that truly reforming policing in America has proven to be exceedingly difficult. Exploring why this is true will allow me to introduce many aspects of police culture.
I don’t want this series to be a dry academic experience for readers. I freely admit to having powerful, positive, emotional bonds with many police officers. I know many of you will think less of me because of that.
I also have a police file, that pre the computer era occupied an entire file drawer. I am still adding to it. I have suffered a skull fracture and severe concussion in an unprovoked attack by a member of the Los Angeles Police Department. I have been shot as a result of a law enforcement officer being insanely trigger happy (I nearly shot him I was so pissed). I am missing a chunk of my left forearm as a result.
It is my friends in law enforcement that convinced me reforming the police is vital if we want safe, happy, productive neighborhoods and communities. They proved to me that police culture is toxic. They traced that toxicity to the history of policing in America.
In his article The History of Policing in America Dr. Gary Potter explains the problem very clearly.
More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to “disorder.” What constitutes social and public order depends largely on who is defining those terms, and in the cities of 19th century America
they were defined by the mercantile interests, who through taxes and political influence supported the development of bureaucratic policing institutions.
More than crime, modern police forces in the United States emerged as a response to “disorder.”
These economic interests had a greater interest in social control than crime control. Private and for profit policing was too disorganized and too crime- specific in form to fulfill these needs. The emerging commercial elites needed a mechanism to insure a stable and orderly work force, a stable and orderly environment for the conduct of business, and the maintenance of what they referred to as the “collective good” (Spitzer and Scull 1977). These mercantile interests also wanted to divest themselves of the cost of protecting their own enterprises, transferring those costs from the private sector to the state. Maintaining a stable and disciplined work force for the developing system
of factory production and ensuring a safe and tranquil community for the conduct of commerce required an organized system of social control. The developing profit-based system of production antagonized social tensions in the community. Inequality was increasing rapidly; the exploitation of workers through long hours, dangerous working conditions, and low pay was endemic; and the dominance of local governments by economic elites was creating political unrest. The only effective political strategy available to exploited workers was what economic elites referred to as “rioting,” which was actually a primitive form of what would become union strikes against employers (Silver 1967). The modern police force not only provided an organized, centralized body of men (and they were all male) legally authorized to use force to maintain order, it also provided the illusion that this order was being maintained under the rule of law, not at the whim of those with economic power.
Defining social control as crime control was accomplished by raising the specter of the “dangerous classes.” The suggestion was that public drunkenness, crime, hooliganism, political protests and worker “riots” were the products of a biologically inferior, morally intemperate, unskilled and uneducated underclass. The consumption of alcohol was widely seen as the major cause of crime and public disorder. The irony, of course, is that public drunkenness didn’t exist until mercantile and commercial interests created venues for and encouraged the commercial sale of alcohol in public places. This underclass was easily identifiable because it consisted primarily of the poor, foreign immigrants and free blacks (Lundman 1980: 29). This isolation of the “dangerous classes” as the embodiment of the crime problem created a focus in crime control that persists to today, the idea that policing should be directed toward “bad” individuals, rather than social and economic conditions that are criminogenic in their social outcomes.
As Dr. Potter goes on to explain this social suppression combined with the Southern approach to policing to create the foundations of American policing.
In the Southern states the development of American policing followed a different path. The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the “Slave Patrol” (Platt 1982). The first formal slave patrol was created in
the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992). Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing “Jim Crow” segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.
Serious research into police culture and research driven suggestions for police reform started in the years immediately after WWII with what is known as the Law and Society Movement. The idea was that social science could inform our understanding of the law both at a policy/legislative level and as it is actually administered and enforced. And then in 1966 Jerome Skolnick produced the first seminal work in understanding police culture and reforming the police.
Skolnick followed the same method I have been using. He acquired quasi status with the police and essentially embedded himself in their culture. In his 1966 book, “Justice Without Trial,” which is based on his embedding himself among the police in two U.S. cities, Skolnick introduced the concept of “symbolic assailant”. He posited that officers perceive the existence of danger based on the behavior or appearance of people whom they observe while on patrol. In a chapter on police officers’ “working personality,” he wrote that, in general, the police officers whom he studied have “come to identify the black man with danger.”
I have to pause here and point out that in Canada the symbolic assailant is an indigenous male. In fact, the police forces in each country I have studied have their own symbolic assailant, their own hard wired ideas about who is a particular risk to the safety of police officers. Who the police fear is a reflection of what marginal population the dominant population wants suppressed and oppressed. The police brutalize, intimidate, assault, arrest, and kill those they have picked as symbolic assailants at a far higher rate than the population at large.
Jerome Skolnick didn’t coin the term Warrior Mentality but his is the first description of key aspects of warrior culture in policing. I think the best explanation of the warrior mindset and how it poisons policing is in the brilliant work of Seth Stoughton. The following quote is from Stoughton’s Law Enforcement’s Warrior Problem in Harvard Law Review.
What is the warrior mindset? In its most restrictive sense, it refers to the mental tenacity and attitude that officers, like soldiers, are taught to adopt in the face of a life-threatening struggle. In this context, the warrior mindset refers to a bone-deep commitment to survive a bad situation no matter the odds or difficulty, to not give up even when it is mentally and physically easier to do so.7× So narrowly defined, the concept is difficult for anyone to criticize. Unfortunately, the homage paid to the Warrior has expanded that uncontroversial definition beyond all recognition.
The warrior mindset has mutated into the warrior mentality. Like the restrictive version, the broad definition is motivated by the undeniable importance of officer safety. But where the restrictive version represents an attitude that officers should display in the most physically dangerous and psychologically precarious situations, the broad definition instructs officers on how to approach every aspect of their job. From their earliest days in the academy, would-be officers are told that their prime objective, the proverbial “first rule of law enforcement,”8× is to go home at the end of every shift.9× But they are taught that they live in an intensely hostile world. A world that is, quite literally, gunning for them. As early as the first day of the police academy, the dangers officers face are depicted in graphic and heart-wrenching recordings that capture a fallen officer’s last moments.10×Death, they are told, is constantly a single, small misstep away. A recent article written by an officer for Police Magazine opens with this description: “The dangers we expose ourselves to every time we go [on duty] are almost immeasurable. We know this the day we sign up and the academy certainly does a good job of hammering the point home.”11× For example, training materials at the New Mexico Police Academy hammer that point quite explicitly, informing recruits that the suspects they will be dealing with “are mentally prepared to react violently.”12× Each recruit is told, in these words, “[Y]ou could die today, tomorrow, or next Friday.”13×
Under this warrior worldview, officers are locked in intermittent and unpredictable combat with unknown but highly lethal enemies. As a result, officers learn to be afraid. That isn’t the word used in law enforcement circles, of course. Vigilant, attentive, cautious, alert, or observant are the terms that appear most often in police publications. But make no mistake, officers don’t learn to be vigilant, attentive, cautious, alert, and observant just because it’s fun. They do so because they are afraid. Fear is ubiquitous in law enforcement. As I’ve written elsewhere, officers are:
constantly barraged with the message that that they should be afraid, that their survival depends on it. Not only do officers hear it in formal training, they also hear it informally from supervisors and older officers. They talk about it with their peers. They see it on police forums and law enforcement publications.14×
For Warriors, hypervigilance offers the best chance for survival.15×Officers learn to treat every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making.16× Every individual, every situation — no exceptions. Because the enemies’ identities are unknown, everyone is a threat until conclusively proven otherwise. A popular police training text offers this advice: “As you approach any situation, you want to be in the habit of looking for cover[] so you can react automatically to reach it should trouble erupt.”17× A more recent article puts it even more bluntly: “Remain humble and compassionate; be professional and courteous — and have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”18× That plan is necessary, officers are told, because everyone they meet may have a plan to kill them.
The truth is the greatest danger faced by police officers is the culture they work in, not the scofflaws and criminals they deal with every day. Most years suicide is the leading cause of death among active duty police officers followed by traffic accidents. In 2020 Covid probably took first place. In fact, line of duty deaths have been falling for years. This article from WSHU public radio nicely sums up the problem.
Suicide has now become the number one killer of police officers in the U.S. That’s according to Blue H.E.L.P., a group that is helping police departments with the problem.
In 2018, 153 police officers were killed in the U.S. in the line of duty. That same year another 163 died by suicide, figures only brought to light because of Blue H.E.L.P. and its president, Karen Solomon.
“We are the only organization in the country that has three years of consecutive data. We have narratives from the families, we have their names, departments, race and gender. We collect a lot of information.”
Formed in 2015, Blue H.E.L.P. offers families care and support in the aftermath of a suicide and trains law enforcement agencies.
And while in-the-line-of-duty police deaths continue to fall, Blue H.E.L.P.’s data show suicides are on the rise.
From January 2016 through December 2018, 13 officers in Connecticut and 37 in New York died by suicide.
Kristen Clifford is the widow of Nassau County Police Officer Steven Clifford, who died by suicide in May 2017.
“Because of his job as a police officer, he felt he couldn’t talk to anyone or get help. He was afraid of the stigma, he was afraid of being labelled and he was afraid of losing his job.”
John Rich, chief of Ledyard Police in Connecticut, says many police departments have adopted peer support programs, training officers to spot warning signs in their colleagues, but that more needs to be done “to educate our people and to make our officers understand that what you may experience, how you may react, is an absolutely normal human reaction to a very abnormal situation.”
Lawmakers are looking at changing laws to help tackle the problem. Several bills in Connecticut and New York, if passed, would provide more training and resources to reduce police suicides – and recognize the problem to start with.
The recognition of the toxicity of warrior culture in policing and the danger it presents to the public and to police officers led to the first major attempt at police reform, community policing. The movement to community policing began in the late 60s. Sadly, it was often a PR exercise. But some police departments went all in.
In the eighties and nineties the Edmonton Police followed the beat officer model, they also teamed with community workers and organizers. I was one of those community workers and walked the beat with two officers interacting with and assisting community members. Everything we talk about here on DailyKos when police reform comes up the Edmonton Police Service tried in the inner city and along Whyte Avenue. Violent interactions between police and citizens plunged. The crime rate kept falling, particularly serious crimes. Conviction levels rose. And the participating officers reported much higher levels of job satisfaction. But it was very expensive. And not very showy. And many members of the public felt we were being soft on crime.
It is worth noting that policing is and always has been in part a PR exercise and a tool of politics and politicians. It doesn’t matter how good an idea a specific police reform may be, if it doesn’t make the majority population feel safer and more powerful it will wither and die. And if it doesn’t have the support of rank and file officers it is similarly doomed.
This has proven true in many communities. Fully committed community policing seems to have a positive impact but is more expensive and demanding than conventional approaches. Perhaps more telling is that many officers can’t transition to community policing or won’t try. This was certainly our experience in Edmonton. Shortages of capable and committed officers was a real problem.
The combination of white resistance, a lack of capable officers and high costs helped morph community policing into what is commonly called the Guardian Movement. This encompasses what is known as procedural justice. The idea is that if police officers treat citizens fairly and honestly and that is apparent to the community policing becomes more effective and both police officers and community members report improvements in satisfaction with police-civilian interactions. And police begin to move away from the warrior model and towards the guardian model.
Elaborating on the specific behaviors of a good cop doing the right thing, the theory of procedural justice was simplified and operationalized for training street officers through a model developed in 2011 by then King County, Wash., Sheriff Sue Rahr (and first author of this paper), using the acronym LEED — Listen and Explain with Equity and Dignity. Using the LEED model, officers are trained to take the time to listen to people; explain what is going to happen and how the process works; explain why that decision was made so the equity of the decision is transparent; and leave the participants with their dignity intact.
Positive police contact facilitates public confidence.
People tell good cops what is going on in their neighborhoods and work with them to keep it safe. They view good cops as part of their community — one of the key distinguishing characteristics between cops with a guardian mindset and cops who operate with a warrior mindset. The guardian operates as part of the community, demonstrating empathy and employing procedural justice principles during interactions. The behavior of the warrior cop, on the other hand, leads to the perception of an occupying force, detached and separated from the community, missing opportunities to build confidence and trust based on positive interactions. Police leaders dedicated to establishing practices in their agencies based on procedural justice principles must ensure that their organizational culture is not in conflict with these same principles. As Stephen K. Rice and Karen Collins Rice explain, “Organizational systems, such as training, are nested within cultures that tend to go under-acknowledged but have tangible, and even visceral, impacts on the people working within them and their likelihood for embracing change.”
The current culture in some American law enforcement agencies tends toward the warrior mentality. The seeds of that culture are planted during recruit training, when some recruits are trained in an academy environment that is modeled after military boot camp, a model designed to produce a warrior ready for battle and ready to follow orders and rules without question. As Radley Balko points out in his noted book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, the warrior mentality threatens Fourth Amendment principles and casts the relationship between officers and citizens as a battle between “us” and “them.” Balko pulls no punches in describing the Department of Justice under Attorney Generals William French Smith and Edwin Meese during the Reagan era:
This would be a rough decade for the Symbolic Third Amendment [what Balko characterizes as strong American resistance to armies policing American streets]. Reagan’s drug warriors were about to take aim at posse comitatus, utterly dehumanize drug users, cast the drug fight as a biblical struggle between good and evil, and in the process turn the country’s drug cops into holy soldiers.
I am going to stop here because I have to go help out at the hospital for a few hours. I hopefully will post the rest of my summary of police reform later tonight. I will be back to respond to comments at about 4 PM MST this afternoon.